While Drowning in the Desert by Don Winslow

first?”
    Silence.
    “Who’s on first?” I repeated.
    He just stared straight ahead.
    “Please,” I wheedled. “Please,” I whined.
    But after almost twenty-four hours of almost unceasing irritation I finally got my wish: Nathan Silverstein wouldn’t talk to me.
    After about one hour of silence torture later I pulled over into one of those gas station-cum-junk food places.
    “Do you have to use the bathroom?” I asked.
    No answer.
    “Do you?” I repeated.
    Same response.
    “Well, I do,” I said. “So I tell you what: I’ll go in and use the bathroom, then I’ll come back out and if you want to go in, you can. How’s that?”
    Nathan just stared ahead. For a second I thought he was dead except that I could see his frail little chest breathing.
    “Okay, here I go,” I said.
    I went in and stood at the urinal wondering if and when Nathan was ever going to forgive me. I really did feel awful. I felt like hell.
    Until I came back out and saw Nathan driving away.
    The rotten old bastard had taken the car.

Chapter 8
    The state trooper was not amused.
    “Was the vehicle locked?” asked Trooper Darius.
    We were standing in the gas-station parking lot where the temperature was only about 109.
    “No,” I said. “The car was not locked.”
    Even through his reflective sunglasses I could see the disdainful stare. Yeah, all right, I could imagine it, anyway.
    “May I see the keys?” he asked.
    “I don’t have the keys.”
    A long, disgusted pause.
    “You left the keys in the vehicle,” he said.
    “I left the keys in the vehicle.”
    “Your insurance company isn’t going to like that.”
    “It’s a rented car.”
    “Then your insurance company really isn’t going to like that,” he said. “Have you reported the loss to the rental-car agency?”
    “Not yet.”
    “You should.”
    “I will.”
    “License-plate number?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Because it’s a rental car.”
    “That’s right.”
    “The rental agreement will have it,” Trooper Darius said. “Don’t tell me, it’s in the vehicle.”
    “With the keys,” I said.
    He sighed a long-suffering sigh, then asked, “What kind of car is it?”
    I thought about it for a few seconds.
    “Red,” I answered.
    His hand twitched in unconscious yearning around his nightstick.
    “What make ?” he clarified.
    Now I sighed.
    “I know it’s not Japanese or German,” I said. This time he took the glasses off to stare at me. More of a squint, really, in the sun.
    “I don’t suppose it’s much use asking you the year, right?” he said.
    “I don’t know a lot about cars,” I said.
    “No fooling.”
    “I’m from New York,” I explained.
    “Don’t they have cars in New York?”
    “Subway cars,” I joked.
    I should have had one of those cards that said Laugh.
    “You want us to look for a red car,” Trooper Darius said.
    “I can identify the driver.”
    “How?” he asked.
    “Because he was in the car.”
    “When?”
    “When I was driving it,” I said. “Before he took it.”
    Another long pause while the sun beat down on his Smokey the Bear hat and my bare, sweating head.
    “The passenger stole the vehicle?” he asked.
    “I’m not sure I’d say ‘stole,’” I answered. “But, yes, the passenger took the car.”
    “You know the suspect.”
    “I’m afraid I do.”
    “Describe him.”
    “An older gentleman …” I began.
    “How old?”
    “Eighty-six.”
    I had never before seen a state trooper struggling not to laugh.
    “An eighty-six-year-old man stole your car,” he said.
    “Well again, I wouldn’t necessarily say—”
    “Did he beat you up?” he asked.
    “No, I—”
    “Threaten you in any way?”
    “No, you see—”
    “Was he armed?”
    “No,” I said. “I went to use the bathroom and when I came out I saw him driving away. I thought he would turn around and come back, but—”
    “Didn’t the old man need to use the bathroom?” he asked. “Because usually—”
    “That’s what I